Course perennials forming large clumps from stout rhizomes. Leaf-blades linear, firm to hard, the basal sheaths laterally compressed and keeled; ligule a short membrane or a line of hairs. Inflorescence a terminal panicle with whorls of numerous slender racemes; racemes fragile, composed of several to many spikelets, the internodes and pedicels linear. Sessile spikelet laterally compressed, linear to lanceolate; callus rounded and ± truncate or oblique and pungent; lower glume coriaceous to chartaceous, rounded on the back, spinulose; upper glume with or without an awn; lower floret reduced to a hyaline lemma; upper lemma hyaline, bidentate, with a glabrous geniculate awn from the sinus, the awn sometimes reduced or absent; palea minute. Caryopsis oblong. Pedicelled spikelet male, similar to the sessile but smaller.